AustLit

'When I was asked to write this article, I was at once confronted with the difficulty which ultimately must assail every critic in a contribution such as this, not whether to be merely categorical, but to say whether or not there exists in South Australia a body of representative work in which may be found evidence of true poetry. Whether there has been in the verse that exists imagination, creativeness, a tradition, a culture, a direct living note, an expression in words of the beauty of nature, or the things that affect man's spirit and his life. I do not think there has. Such verse as has been written is largely ephemeral, external, and fugitive. It does not constitute, taken as a whole, a permanent and consolidated body of work, through which one might see the national spirit or ethos as one does in English, Irish, German, and French poetry.' (From author's introduction)